The American Portuguese Studies Association proposes a non-guaranteed session on the diversity and interconnections of Luso-Afro-Brazilian music. This focus on music in Portuguese highlights the intersections, influences, and circulation of rhythms, styles, and traditions within and between nations. Rather than examine musical expressions in a solely national framework, the session will underscore the encounters, similarities, and divergences between specific musicians, groups, and genres. This approach will enable a deeper understanding of how Afro-diasporic experiences shape musical practices in Brazil and, more broadly, the Americas; how networks of distribution and performance inform the circulation and consumption of music produced in Portuguese; and how music serves as a creative form of resistance and solidarity in the face of political, social, and cultural repression. In doing so, the panel will explore the centrality of Luso-Afro-Brazilian music to experiences and expressions of celebration—in its joyful and mournful iterations—as the 2023 Presidential Theme, “Celebration: Joy and Sorrow,” invites.

This session will allow scholars of Lusophone literature and culture to delve into the topic pf music from a more comparative and interdisciplinary perspective. Existing scholarship on Brazilian popular music has often centered on well-known genres of samba, bossa nova, MPB, or funk in the works of anthropologist Hermano Vianna, historians Bryan McCann and Marc Hertzman, performance studies scholar Barbara Browning, and literary specialists Charles Perrone and Christopher Dunn. In the context of Portugal, studies have concentrated mainly on the celebrated traditions of fado, as in the books of ethnomusicologist Lila Ellen Gray and historian João Silva, or on the contributions of migrants from Lusophone Africa or Brazil to new musical scenes, as in Derek Pardue’s study of Cape Verdean rap in Lisbon. This panel will expand upon these works by turning toward lesser studied genres and time periods that draw attention to transatlantic Luso-Afro-Brazilian connections. It will also offer a reflection on how musicians from often marginalized groups, including people with disabilities, Afro-Brazilians, and trans people, contribute to musical scenes and genres in innovative and substantive manners.

The session will consist of four presentations of 12 to 14-minutes each, allowing for at least fifteen minutes of unstructured discussion at the end of the session. The session presider will keep introductions short and carefully document the time to ensure this period of conversation. The panel presentations will follow a chronological order, beginning with the late nineteenth century, continuing with reflections on the 50^th anniversaries of key musical and political moments, and concluding with the contemporary moment. The first presenter, John Bagnato, will situate composer and guitarist Levino da Conceição within the historical context of the abolition period to stress his contributions as a blind, Afro-Brazilian musician and advocate who, through his very presence in the concert hall, engaged in acts of resistance. The panel will continue with Benjamin Legg’s analysis of discourses of “ancestralidade angolana” (Angolan ancestrality) from the 1970s and today in the Carnaval participation and music of Bahian bloco africano Ilê Aiyê and, more generally, Brazilian popular culture. The next presenter, Krista Brune, will similarly consider the links between the 1970s and now by turning her attention to how Chico Buarque’s “Fado Tropical” and “Tanto Mar” have developed into transatlantic commemorations of the 1974 Carnation Revolution. The panel will conclude with Pedro Lopes de Almeida’s examination of how contemporary transgender and non-binary electronic musicians in Portugal and Brazil have developed new soundscapes and imaginaries that function as a mode of care and resistance. Together, these presenters will think through the joy and the sorrow of Luso-Afro-Brazilian music to consider how these songs and rhythms bring communities together, transgress boundaries, and engage in acts of resistance, advocacy, and care.